Adobe’s New Audio Software Eerily Mimics Human Speech

Adobe is developing a new audio software called Project VoCo, which can synthesize and edit speech with unsettling realism, the Verge reports. The software company unveiled a demo of the program at their recent MAX conference, and it is being billed as a kind of audio equivalent to Photoshop. One of its most notable features is that it can produce new words and sentences using recordings of someone’s voice. With a minimum of 20 minutes of speech, the program can analyze and understand the intricacies of a speaker’s vocal patterns. Then, words and full sentences can be edited and added with startling accuracy in that person’s natural speaking voice. Below, you can watch a demo of the program in action featuring Jordan Peele. Here’s a statement Adobe shared with Popular Mechanics about how the software works:

“When recording voiceovers, dialogue, and narration, people would often like to change or insert a word or a few words due to either a mistake they made or simply because they would like to change part of the narrative. We have developed a technology called Project VoCo in which you can simply type in the word or words that you would like to change or insert into the voiceover. The algorithm does the rest and makes it sound like the original speaker said those words.”

Since Adobe launched its flagship Photoshop program in 1990, the veracity of digital images has been met with scrutiny. In 2012, for example, the Associated Press severed ties with a Pulitzer Prize winning photographer over manipulated images. Obviously, there are serious ethical implications to consider when it becomes possible to doctor entire sentences in someone else’s voice. Adobe has yet to announce plans to commercially release Project VoCo.